Planning Becker radio installs

In the two years of owning my 560SEL, one of the things I have appreciated is the original Becker CD player. I’ve owned many classic Mercedes-Benz models over the years, but until the 560SEL none of them had their original Becker intact. The Becker radios just look and feel right in the dash of the car. I had never really understood that before. That got me thinking about putting some of my other cars back to stock.

The first car in line is my 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450SLC. When I purchased the car in 2003, it had a 90’s era cassette […]

450SLC radio wiring

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work to my 450SLC lately. One of my more recent jobs has been to fix the A/C condensate leak. While I was there, I noticed that rats nest of wiring for old amplifiers, car alarms and car phones. I removed most of this, but the result was that the radio in the car was no longer working. The photo below shows just some of the old wiring I removed from the car. My task today was to investigate the 450SLC radio wiring to work out why.

The radio in the car is […]

W123 Radio Upgrade – bypassing the factory fader

The 280CE was back today to get a radio installed. When I purchased the car, the previous owner had removed their radio, so there was a great big hole in the dash. Luckily, my brother who purchased the car from me already had a Sony radio he had removed from his previous 280CE. The W123 radio is a standard DIN fitting. Unfortunately most of them no longer have their original Becker radios but generic 90s CD players.

This car still had the factory fader switch installed. That means that there is only a front and rear channel for the radio. […]

Polishing day

Today spend more time working on the paintwork of the DS. I finished wet-sanding the car, and the lower panels have all been polished with both stage 1 and stage 2 of the Auto Glym Paint Pro I have been using.

Overall the car is looking much better. Despite going through the paint in a few places where it was very bubbly, there is now some shine on the paint and the rear wings especially are not a matte finish anymore. I will do one more go of the stage 2 polish when I get some time.

I also spent […]